Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon
Global Visionary
Bestselling author of The Upside of Down and the Governor General's award-winning book The Ingenuity Gap, Dr. Thomas Homer Dixon's work focuses on threats to global security in the 21st century, and how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological and technological change. His presentations provide a wake-up call that is pertinent to any audience, and provide solutions to the many complex problems that governments, corporations and individuals face.
"Thomas Homer-Dixon is one of the best-informed and most brilliant writers on global affairs today." - The Guardian
Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon is an award-winning author and teacher who helps his audiences understand how our world is changing. In simple, clear language he shows how challenges such as economic crisis, energy scarcity, global warming, and infoglut affect people, companies, and societies, and he explains what we can all do to adapt and prosper in a world of ever-greater complexity, speed, and surprise.
Dr. Homer-Dixon is one of the world's leading experts on the intricate links between nature, technology, and society. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, he received a BA from Carleton University in Ottawa and a PhD from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied international relations, defense and arms control policy, cognitive science, and conflict theory. Dr. Homer-Dixon held the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto before taking on his new role as Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. Dr. Homer-Dixon is also Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo.
Dr. Homer-Dixon's research focuses on threats to global security in the 21st century and on how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change. He is particularly interested in the causes and consequences of economic instability; in the relationship between climate change, world energy consumption, and violent conflict; and in how we can use the Internet to promote democratic problem solving.
Dr. Homer-Dixon's most recent book, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, was an immediate #1 bestseller in Canada, a Globe and Mail top 100 pick, and the winner of the 2006 National Business Book Award. His previous book, The Ingenuity Gap, also a #1 bestseller, won the 2001 Governor-General's Award for Non-fiction. His first book, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, won the Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association.
As one of Canada's foremost public intellectuals, Dr. Homer-Dixon writes regularly for the Globe and Mail and the New York Times. He has also written for the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune. His widely cited scholarly articles have appeared in leading journals, including International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and Population and Development Review.
Dr. Homer-Dixon has been invited to speak about his ideas and research at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Cornell Universities, UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, West Point, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Dr. Homer-Dixon has provided briefings to the Privy Council Office, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Department of Defence in Canada; and to the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the National Intelligence Council, the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
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TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS
·Energy, society, and economic change
·Climate change and society
·Leadership in a world of complexity, speed, and surprise
·Building resilient organizations, cities, and societies
·Threats to international security in the 21st century, including terrorism
·Education for a new world
·The ingenuity gap
·The challenges of rising complexity
Energy and Climate Issues
Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon has almost three decades of professional, academic, and research experience dealing with energy and climate issues. He is currently studying the interactions between energy, climate change, and society, with special attention to the challenges facing the energy industry.
The Ingenuity Gap
Can we solve the problems of the future? Thomas Homer-Dixon tackles this question in a groundbreaking study of a world becoming too complex and too fast-paced to manage.
The challenges we face converge, intertwine, and often remain largely beyond our understanding. Most of us suspect that the "experts" don't really know what's going on and that as a species we've released forces that are neither managed nor manageable. This is the ingenuity gap, the critical gap between our need for ideas to solve complex problems and our actual supply of those ideas.
Poor countries are particularly vulnerable to ingenuity gaps, but our own rich countries are no longer immune, and we're all caught dangerously between a soaring requirement for ingenuity and an increasingly uncertain supply. As the gap widens, the result can be political disintegration and violent upheaval.
With riveting anecdotes and lucid argument, Thomas Homer-Dixon uses his ingenuity theory to suggest how we might approach these problems -- in our own lives, our thinking, our businesses, and our societies.
The Upside of Down
Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization
The Upside of Down sets out a theory of the growth, breakdown, and renewal of societies. It argues that today's converging energy, environmental, and political-economic stresses could cause a breakdown of national and global order. But there are things we can do now to keep such a breakdown from being catastrophic. And less severe types of breakdown could open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies, if we're prepared to exploit these opportunities when they arise.
Titles of some recent speeches:
On Climate Change: ·Canadian Municipalities and the Climate Challenge
·Global Warming in Polar Regions: Is the Canary Singing?
·Global Change, Global Information Infrastructure, and the Global Public Good
·Positive Feedbacks, Dynamic Ice Sheets, and the Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply: The New Sense of Urgency about Global Warming
On Energy: ·The Coal Conundrum: Can We Reconcile the Exigencies of Climate, Growth, and Global Peace?
·Racing Backwards: The Recarbonization of the Global Fuel Supply
On Developing Resilience: ·Risks and Resilience: Calgary in a Future of Complexity, Speed, and Surprise
·Resilient Cities: San Antonio in a Future of Complexity, Speed and Surprise
·The Ingenuity Challenge: Service Delivery and Organizational Resilience
·Distributed Local Food Systems and Social Resilience
On War, Peace, and Global Security: ·Agents of Peace in a Time of Turmoil
·Can Cities Survive?
·Global Threats to Global Urbanization
·A Theory of Societal Collapse: Convergent Shocks, Thermodynamic Disequilibrium, and Brittleness
·Conflict in a Nonlinear World: Complex Adaptation at the Intersection of Energy, Climate, and Security
On Education: ·The Upside of Down: Preparing Our Students for a Non-Linear Future
·Educating the Prospective Mind: Learning to be Resilient in a World of Complexity, Speed and Surprise
On Leadership: ·Thinking Beyond Management: Leadership for Modern Times
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The most persuasive forecast of the 21st century I have seen.
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No other new concept so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading.
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For over a decade, Thomas Homer-Dixon has provided that rare thing: a bridge between leading-edge research and the lay reader. Now, addressing the greatest problems of our time, he points us towards a path forward.
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Anyone who doubts the seriousness of the human predicament should read Thomas Homer-Dixon's brilliant THE UPSIDE OF DOWN. Anyone who understands the seriousness should also read it for Homer-Dixon's insightful ideas about how to make society more resilient in the face of near inevitable environmental and social catastrophes.
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This book is a major corrective for a culture that has struggled to form a comprehensive appreciation for the trouble we face. Climate change, global oil depletion, explosive geopolitics all threaten to overwhelm our ability to think clearly and act competently. Anyone who wants to get serious about the defense of civilization had better read The Upside of Down.
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Our future likely depends on listening to him.
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The Future Global Security yesterday session was absolutely excellent!! Participants have contacted me to say that you took the most complicated topics and made them understandable. You helped people to feel the urgency about the global (current and future) context for which public service leaders must be prepared for. That's why we bring you back every time!!!!!
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April 2009Carbon Shift
The twin crises of climate change and peaking oil production are converging on us. If they are not to cook the planet and topple our civilization, we will need informed and decisive policies, clear-sighted innovation, and a lucid understanding of what is at stake. We will need to know where we stand, and which direction we should start out in. These are the questions that Carbon Shift addresses.
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October 2006The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization
The Upside of Down provides a vivid picture of the immense pressures that are simultaneously converging on our societies and threatening a profound breakdown. Homer-Dixon argues that the great stresses we are experiencing – global warming, energy scarcity, population imbalances, and widening gaps between rich and poor – can’t be looked at independently. Homer-Dixon makes it clear that we can use our emerging understanding of the complex systems in which we live to avoid catastrophic collapse.
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August 2001The Ingenuity Gap: Can We Solve The Problems Of The Future
In The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer-Dixon, "global guru" (the Toronto Star), "genuine academic celebrity" (Saturday Night) and "one of Canada''s most talked about and controversial scholars" (Maclean's) asks: is our world becoming too complex, too fast-paced to manage? The challenges facing us -- ranging from international financial crises and global climate change to pandemics of tuberculosis and AIDS- converge, intertwine, and remain largely beyond our ken. Most of suspect the "experts don't really know what''s going on; that as a species we''ve released forces that are neither managed nor manageable. We are fast approaching a time when we may no longer be able to control a world that increasingly exceeds our grasp. This is "the ingenuity gap" -- the term coined by Thomas Homer-Dixon, political scientist and advisor to the White House -- the critical gap between our need for practical, innovative ideas to solve complex problems and our actual supply of those ideas.
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July 2001Environment, Scarcity, and Violence
The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital renewable resources as cropland, fresh water, and forests. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in this sobering book that these environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences--contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence, especially in the developing world.
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March 1998Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population and Security
Ecoviolence explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources such as cropland, fresh water, and forests and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Detailed contemporary studies of civil violence in Chiapas, Gaza, South Africa, Pakistan, and Rwanda show how environmental scarcity has played a limited to significant role in causing social instability in each of these contexts. Drawing upon theory and key findings from the case studies, the authors suggest that environmental scarcity will worsen in many poor countries in coming decades and will become an increasingly important cause of major civil violence.
